New Image of Moon Shows Astronauts’ Footsteps. So Rad.
(Click to enlarge.)
The above picture is g’damn outstanding. It’s a picture from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the Apollo 12 mission in fantastic detail. To stop and contemplate this is a picture of a different body in space where man has been. And we can see our marks.
The entire shot shown here is a little over 350 meters across (pictures from Apollo 14 and 17 are also available at on NASA’s website). Various highlights are labeled: the descent stage of the lunar module (left behind when the top half of the module blasted back up to orbit, docked with the command module, and returned home to Earth), the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), and even Surveyor 3, an unmanned lander that had touched down two years previously; one of the Apollo 12 mission goals was to land near it, examine it, and return pieces of it. Clearly, they nailed that.
The part of the picture showing the lander is really something. LRO took images of the site in 2009, but these new ones are more detailed due to the lowered orbit, and also a bit clearer due to the angle of the Sun being lower. You can see the lander’s shadow to the right far more clearly.
… and those squiggly lines? That’s where the dust was disturbed by the astronauts’ bootprints as they walked around.
Existential cosmo-porn.